In 1886, leading brewing figures including Henry Allsopp and Michael Arthur Bass were elevated to the peerage. Their honours made the phrase Beerage more than a joke about rich brewers. Brewing wealth had clearly entered the social and political elite.

The brewer peerages helped radical and temperance writers portray drink as an entrenched aristocratic interest, not merely a personal vice. The event gives context to satirical verse, socialist poetry, and Liberal attacks on the House of Lords, reflecting the interplay of politics and culture in literary expression.